West Haven officials: No data compromised in attempted breach of City Hall servers

By Mark Zaretsky, mzaretsky@nhregister.com @markzar on Twitter

Updated 10:29 am, Saturday, September 16, 2017

WEST HAVEN >> The “data breach” of City Hall computer servers has been found to be an unsuccessful attempt to copy information, and it was foiled by security safeguards the city had in place. Also, no personal information, such as employees’ or residents’ Social Security numbers or medical information, was compromised, the city’s computer system manager said Friday.

Meanwhile, the Police Department has closed its investigation, said Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Perno.

“Yesterday, there was an unsuccessful attempt to copy data on 12 of our servers,” city Information Technology manager David W. Richards said in a statement that city spokesman Michael Walsh said would be emailed to all city employees. “Because of security in place, no data was illegally viewed or removed.

“None of the affected servers contained any personal information, such as Social Security numbers or medical information, of any employees or residents,” Richards said in the statement. “There is no evidence that any city employee is directly, maliciously or otherwise responsible for the issue we saw. Based on the software type, this was not a targeted attack.”

Perno said that, “basically, there was an attempted entry from outside that was blocked by the city’s firewalls. So, everything that was in place ... worked properly on the city’s end.

“We didn’t know at first if it was breached, and once we realized that everything the city had in place” had worked to prevent data from being compromised, “then there’s no criminality involved in it,” Perno said. “Once that was determined, we closed our investigation.”

He said the city nevertheless is “strengthening [its computer defenses] up a little bit.” He praised both Richards and the Police Department’s computer crimes division for their work.

According to Richards, “The program that tried to harvest the information was unsuccessful largely due to the file security on each server. When the program tried to run and failed, it would immediately try again, causing the server to become extremely slow. This is the reason for the various network issues yesterday.”

Standard procedure with any suspected data breach “is to immediately involve the police department to preserve evidence,” Richards said. “West Haven police were on scene for more than half the day as we investigated the situation.

“The police investigation, with the help of the computer crimes division, has closed,” Richards said. “Because of certain security information, the exact details cannot be disclosed; however, we are able to verify that no data was compromised.”

Existing data “was also compared to backups to verify their integrity,” he said. “The investigation was conducted by both myself and the Police Department, validating each other’s findings. In short, it was just a scare, and there is nothing to be concerned about at this time. Further steps will be taken based on this incident to harden the network with additional protections.”

Both Mayor Ed O’Brien and Director of Finance Kevin McNabola had confirmed Thursday night that someone attempted to gain access to the city’s computer system, with both referring to it as a “data breach.”

“I know there was a data breach,” O’Brien said Thursday night. “The police cyber crimes unit is looking into it. ... Police were there all afternoon — for at least three or four hours.”

“But to the best of my knowledge there was no personal information, no social security numbers, no medical records” involved, he said.

O’Brien said that, as far as he could tell, “I think it was an unsuccessful attempt.”